Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

In this talk, Berkman Klein affiliate Jonas Kaiser shares some of his research on the networked public sphere. "The right-wing is rising. Not only in the United States but also in Germany and other European countries. And the internet helped," he writes. "Right-wing actors are active all over the internet, adapt to platforms, game the system, blur the lines between off- and online, and create their own virtual spaces. In addition, social media platforms like YouTube contribute involuntarily to the right-wing's reach and, perhaps, influence with their algorithms." In this talk Kaiser will explore these issues and potential ways forward.

More info on this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/01/Kaiser

The January 4, 2018 release of the Federal Communications Commission’s "Restoring Internet Freedom Order" marked the most recent turn of events in the longstanding and ever-changing debate over net neutrality.

In this lively debate, Christopher S. Yoo (Founding Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania) and Matt Wood (Policy Director of Free Press) explore the consequences of this action, including the implications of the Order, the outcome of the judicial challenge, and the possibility of legislative reform.

More info on this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/01/NetNeutrality

After a photographer left his camera equipment out for a group of wild macaques to explore, the monkeys took a series of photos, including selfies. Once the photos were posted publicly, legal disputes arose around who should own the copyrights — the human photographer who engineered the situation, or the macaques who snapped the photos. This unique case raises the increasingly pertinent question as to whether non-humans — whether they be monkeys or artificial intelligence machines — can claim copyrights to their creations.

Jon Lovvorn, Lecturer on Law and the Policy Director of Harvard Law School's Animal Law & Policy Program, hosts a discussion panel featuring Jeff Kerr, the General Counsel of PETA, which sued on behalf of the monkey, and experts on copyright, cyber law, and intermediary liability issues, as well as Tiffany C. Li of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, and Christopher T. Bavitz and Kendra Albert of Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic.

More info on this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/01/monkeyselfie

In this talk, Orly Lobel—award-winning author of Talent Wants to be Free and the Don Weckstein Professor of Law at the University of San Diego—delves into the legal disputes between toy powerhouses to expose the ways IP is used as a sledgehammer in today’s innovation battles.

More info on this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/01/Lobel

Can diversity and free expression co-exist on our campuses? How about in our town squares, our cities, and our world? In this talk, John Palfrey — Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, and author of the new book "Safe Spaces, Braves Spaces" — leads a discussion of two of the foundational values of our democracy in the digital age.

Learn more about this event, and watch the video here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/10/Palfrey

Since the rise of the web in the 1990s, technological skeptics have always faced resistance. To question the virtue and righteousness of tech, and especially computing, was seen as truculence, ignorance, or luddism. But today, the real downsides of tech, from fake news to data breaches to AI-operated courtrooms to energy-sucking bitcoin mines, have become both undeniable and somewhat obvious in retrospect.

In light of this new technological realism, perhaps there is appetite for new ways to think about and plan for the future of technology, which anticipates what might go right and wrong once unproven tech mainstreams quickly.

In this conversation, author and an award-winning game designer Dr. Ian Bogost considers a technology that has not yet mainstreamed—autonomous vehicles—as a test case on how we should think about the future of tech.

More info on this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/12/Bogost

Black users have consistently been at the vanguard of digital and social media use, pioneering and anticipating digital trends including live tweeting and the podcast boom. As harassment on social media platforms becomes increasingly aggressive, and increasingly automated, users must develop strategies for navigating this hostility. Having long endured coordinated campaigns of harassment, Black users are again at the forefront of a shift in digital practices – the creation of digital enclaves.

With new patterns of use, Sarah Florini — Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Department of English Arizona State University — explores emerging methodological and ethical questions regarding research in this space.

For more info on this event visit:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/12/Florini

Black women have historically occupied a unique position, existing in multiple worlds, manipulating multiple technologies, and maximizing their resources for survival in a system created to keep them from thriving.

In this talk, University of Maryland Professor Catherine Knight Steele presents a case for the unique development of black women’s relationship with technology by analyzing historical texts that explore the creation of black womanhood in contrast to white womanhood and black manhood in early colonial and antebellum periods in the U.S.

This study of Black feminist discourse online situates current practices in the context of historical use and mastery of communicative technology by the black community broadly and black women more specifically. By tracing the history of black feminist thinkers in relationship to technology we move from a deficiency model of black women’s use of technology to recognizing their digital skills and internet use as part of a long developed expertise.

Find out more about this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/11/KnightSteele

eBay resolves 60 million disputes a year and Alibaba 100 million. How do they do that? At the other less impressive extreme, in 2015 the IRS hung up on telephone callers 8.8 million times without making contact. Are there online solutions for that? Disputes are a “growth industry” on the internet, an inevitable by-product of innovation but often harmful to individuals. Drawing on his recent book, Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes, (co-authored with Orna Rabinovich), Professor Katsh considers opportunities for online dispute resolution and prevention in ecommerce, health care, social media, employment, and the courts.

Find out more about this event here:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/node/100073

Caroline Weinberg — one of the co-chairs and organizers of the March for Science — discusses two broad questions: How is the Internet involved in the planning of large scale, high visibility political demonstrations? And, how can we harness the potential of demonstrations to build into movements?

For more information on this event visit:

https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/10/Weinberg